Why Restricting Guns & Magazines in NOT the Answer

Nothing wrong with that when used responsibly; hunting, and self-defense come to mind. Cars may not be designed to kill people but they sure make it easier to rack up the total death numbers when abused in this country and somehow this is accepted because ?

 

I think we should outlaw guns and push for swords and bow+arrow. At least there will be some kind of art in combats rather than stop, pop, dead.

 

It is highly regulated, requires training, annual inspections, insurance, etc.

 

Good points by the OP, but 3D printing is not the reason why magazine bans are pointless.

They are easy to make anyway. Magazines (clips are only used in rifles like the M1 Garrand) are basically 19th century technology and are easy enough to make on a workbench. For that matter, firearms in general have changed little in the last 120+ years.

The US has a gun culture, and there are hundreds of millions legally in circulation. Advocating taking those away from people who already own them is not a popular idea except to an audience that has never owned and knows little about firearms except for what they see on television. And if you DON'T advocate taking them away from the people who already own them, then the law is even more pointless. It might score points with concerned voters, but it has no teeth.

That's how I felt about the so-called "Assault Weapons" ban which was easily circumvented at the time by sticking wooden stocks on them all and selling them with five round magazines.

That may not be as passionate an argument as arguing what the Founding Fathers meant in the 2nd Amendment, but I think it's largely irrelevant. The US isn't the UK or Australia or Canada and gun ownership has always been a way of life for people outside the big cities.

Most gun deaths are urban, overwhelmingly from inexpensive handguns, often stolen or in some way illegally obtained, and in drug related crimes. This is not true for the serial nuts that shoot out malls and schools, abut they are a tiny fraction of the number of homicides.

There are way bigger problems that lead to the culture of violence. And it's not video games:
1. Unrealistic depiction of weapons in popular culture.

2. A lack of education and awareness about world events, which leads to paranoia and fear of others, be it from right-wing demagauges that say the President is a secret Muslim and the UN a communist conspiracy, and left-wing ones that tell you everything you eat will kill you, that every stranger your child encounters is a likely pedophile, and that everyone who owns a gun is a potential Charles Whitman or John Hinckley Jr in waiting.

3. Religious fundamentalism, which also exploits that fear and ignorance.

4. The puritan War on Drugs which both punishes mar1juana smokers and makes the drug trade profitable enough to risk killing over.

If you want to fix things:
1. Bring back the Fairness Doctrine and make media pundits work harder for their political arguments, and send the fear-mongers back under the rocks where they belong. Forcing media outlets to air counterpoints will keep them honest and help keep people from drifting into paranoia.

2. Decriminalize drugs. Period.

3. Separate religion from state affairs. Seperate the God from the Guns for the Guns & God voting habits of low information voters.

4. Improve public education and access to preventative health care, including mental health care.

5. Conduct public campaigns to reduce the taboo of mental health issues. People often fear seeking treatment for fear of stigma. They shouldn't.

6. Look out for people, your neighbors and your family and friends. People usually DO exhibit signs of anti-social behavior, but in the US, we tend to look the other way and not confront people, and I think this isolates them even more and helps deteriorate their mental health even more.

There's too much talk about preventing ourselves from being victims of nameless "bad people" but those "bad people" are someone's son, someone's best friend, someone's cousin, someone's fishing buddy, and so on.

7. If you really want federal gun legislation, it should be this: Require every state to enact hunter education programs for anyone presently under 18 to get a license to own a firearm (it would have to be grandfathered), and do the licensing under the DMV, just as they do concealed carry. Texas already has one, but expand it to include safety and basic competency for every class of firearm and situations other than hunting where they would be likely to be used (home defense, competition shooting).

Require people to pass a reasonably difficult written test and qualify at the range with different classes of firearms to own them just as they do with classes of vehicles. This would include class 3 weapons, and FFL dealers which presently have their own (federal) rules, as well as security guard licensing. It would also include the right to hunt in any state, and reciprocity for concealed carry licencees, which would all be categories under the program. It would then incentivize gun enthusiasts to be on board.

It would be a long course (at least as long as Driver's Ed), and cost way more money than it does now, but shouldn't be so cost prohibitive that it prevents the poor from owning a firearm. It could even be taught in high schools in rural districts. It should also allow teens that go hunting to legally use said firearms in the presence of an adult who has a license.

If a person looses their freedom due to violent acts (assault, DUI, etc) or becomes institutionalized due to mental illness or chemical addiction, that license gets suspended until a person can prove they are competent again to own a firearm.

This way you cover basic safety issues, weed out people who aren't serious enough to want it bad enough (and probably shouldn't be owning firearms), and screen the people who aren't necessarily dangerous but are at risk.

 

Coming late to this thread. While with 3d printing you might be able to make the parts of guns there is still the problem of having the right materials. The steel for gun barrels and firing chambers need to be built to tolerances to handle the pressures and temperatures of firing particularly with a semi automatic where many rounds will be fired in a short time. Such material can be obtained legally but it does take more knowledge and isn't that cheap.

Even if guns could be easily handmade ammunition could still be taxed and regulated much greater. While many people already make their ammunition
smokeless powder is already regulated and could certainly be regulated much higher.

While it is possible DIY guns could make gun laws irrelevant consider that the knowledge for DIY bombs are widely known but successful bombings in the US are very rare, much rarer than killings with guns. COnsider that Faisal Shazad the Times Square Bomber, had engineering training along with specific bomb training couldn't build a working bomb. Regulation of materials required to build bombs has been fairly effective.

 

Good post Deji and few people are advocating gun control as the only solution. Guns are a symptom of larger problems but that doesn't mean that greater regulation shouldn't be part of the solution.

Many gun rights advocated have made this an either / or argument when this is about a multi-faceted approach that includes better dealing with mental health, the culture of violence and easy access to very lethal weapons.

 

Guns are highly regulated, requires hunter education classes, restrictions, age limits, ATF 4473 form background checks, specific rules of transport, etc

 

Each thread Supernut starts is a testament to the desperation and stupidity of the gun lobby. The absurdity of not solving a problem that actually exists because of speculative silliness is like not looking for a job today because you might win the lottery in 10 years, and all of your work would have been superseded and rendered superfluous.

You should 3D print some common sense, believe it or not, it would help your "hobby > lives" argument rather than hinder it, with garbage like this.

 

Drunk Driving laws has had a big influence on the number of drunk driving fatalities since it's implementation -it has gone down. It is not because folks are drinking less, people are just more aware that if you get caught, it will immediately affect your life. Jail time, suspension of license, loss of car and a record that says you were convicted of doing so can influence if you are hired or not.

If you have gun laws that say, make it a felony and ..
if you get caught selling/distributing illegal guns parts - 15 yrs plus fines
if you get caught manufacturing one - 10 years plus fines
if you get caught owning one - 5 years plus fines

The psychological effect it will have on people (just like DUI laws) will be huge. The risk to rewards ratio (for logical people) will heavily sway towards NOT even going there.

The idea of not creating any drunk driving laws because people are just going to keep drinking is the same reasoning your are advocating.

 

I don't know if this is the same for every state but my understanding is that you don't require hunter education classes to own a gun. I think there are age limits to buy but not to own as I've known several teenagers who have been given guns as birthday and Christmas presents. True there is an ATF background check but as been repeatedly noted there are some very big loopholes in there.

 

I hate that my new desk is near a TV playing Fox News 24/7 with the volume on. Not only do I have to hear that, but people gather 'round to watch the shows and talk politics all around me. It gets old fast.

As for the pharaoh's forthcoming edicts, whogivesa****. Everything is already screwed and has been for a while.

 

This 3D printing argument just cut into more in favor of stricter gun control, not less. When Technological advances make an inherently dangerous activity even more dangerous (in absolute terms), more regulations on that activity are needed. We don't submit to technologies.

 

Yea but you have to have background checks verified by the ATF. Loopholes are not a process of the instantcheck system tho. There are age limits and the transport rules in every state is substantial.

 

There are x number of ICBM's in existence but since no cities were destroyed by them this year then their primary purpose isn't to blow **** up. That is some brilliant stuff. You are deep in the cool aid. You're clearly no math major nor do out have much of a grasp on this subject. So you skip right over that demolition of your inane argument to talk about how every day people die, people just die. These kids didn't just die, some ******* with a gun killed them. This is not kids accidentally drowning in a bathtub, or accidentally being killed in an auto accident, or dying from an accidental overdose, it's called murder. Murder is intentionally killing someone and in this case something that would have been incredibly more difficult to do without a semi automatic weapon. You give this r****ded idea that somehow we're going to stop people from doing crazy things. There is no scenario in which you can stop people from doing crazy things. It's a joke that you promote that as an answer. You can however stop people from making killing easy by limiting access to weapons that make it damn easy to kill a lot of people. Weapons that serve no useful purpose in society. You can just as easily hunt, target shoot, be a tough guy with a non semi auto weapon. This whole argument is much like the health care debate. You have all these reasons we can't do **** to change things because things are working so well, except they're not and you don't care because all you're concerned with is yourself like a good conservative.

 

What about fonts and kerneling? If we can find the flaws in Obama's birth certificate, we can surely trace printed guns back to the HP that printed them. Or maybe we require guns to be printed only in comic sans serif.

 

The primary purpose of ICBMs is deterrence.

 

Looks like this instance of misdirection has failed as badly as the last one. Time to start another thread with a different tact. basso is doing his part, keep it up.

Hopefully, it won't get samfishered as bad as the last few.

 

The black market for nuclear material doesn't exist for deterrence.